


Eleven Hours at the End of the World

by soundingsea



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Apocalypse, Female Protagonist, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-26
Updated: 2005-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:25:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/pseuds/soundingsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oldest Slayer Not Yet Dead" has a certain macabre ring to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eleven Hours at the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiarrajanae](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=tiarrajanae).



> Written for: tiarrajanae for the BtVS/AtS Missing Stories Un-Ficathon (original request from the Tales of the Slayer ficathon)  
> Spoilers: "Chosen", "Not Fade Away"  
> Thanks: spiralleds for beta, ironchefjoe for zombie expertise, and melange for brainstorming

All trends start in California and roll eastward. This, Sarah knows. She used to read _Seventeen_, after all, back when she actually was seventeen, before her life fell apart. So it isn't exactly surprising when the end of the world comes hurtling out of Los Angeles.

Three years ago, at sixteen, she was playing at one of the Greater Omaha Area League's few spring soccer games. Her parents were cheering at the sidelines. She scored and won a decisive victory for her team -- left her opponents in the dust. Being a superhero seemed kinda neat, that first year, until the world went the way of LA.

No point to thinking on that now. Anniversary's months past, and if she's not mistaken, she's waking up to a fight. Can't a girl camp in peace? In the last orange light of dawn, something that really ought to be rotting in its grave shuffles into her campsite. She could out-run it, easy, but killing's more permanent.

Getting out of her frost-laced hammock's no fun at all. The first cool licks of fall have given way to the biting edge of winter. She shivers in the crisp air. Her camo's desert-issue; hell, none of her gear's rated for weather much colder than this. Past time to find a warm bed, even if that means dealing with people -- the living ones, even. This season's far-flung patrol is screeching to a halt, not that the zombie attacking her seems to get that.

Thrust, duck, clobber with the butt of her shotgun, smash the skull. Blood splatters all over her, but hey -- she's got more fatigues in her pack. Ammo is precious, and while shooting'm is the most efficient (and tidy) choice, bashing in a zombie's head is cake with slayer strength. Yeah. Being a superhero's just peachy fucking keen.

***

Sarah unhooks her hammock from the bent signpost and the knobby tree. "Snow Emergency Route", proclaims the sign. Well, partially right. She's pretty sure nobody's coming to plow this winter. But it's sunk in concrete, which is nearly forever, so the sign remains.

She shakes the ice crystals off the hammock and rolls it into a tight cylinder, stuffing it into her pack. She twists her curly brown hair into a new braid and wraps her knit scarf around her head and neck. Makes her look like a tobogganing kid, maybe. Minus the hard-bitten expression and the ever-present gun, of course.

A bus bench announces "McDonalds, only two blocks away!" She sits on it, lacing her boots and chewing a mouthful of dry, flavorless beef jerky. Hooray for camping stores; they're not as picked-over as the grocery stores, and they still yield plenty of useful stuff. She washes the food down with water she pumped and purified yesterday; not exactly an Egg McMuffin and black coffee, but she can't afford to be choosy. The bus bench tells a mute lie; no hot breakfast is available within two blocks or two hundred miles of here.

And there's a pervasive sense of _wrong_ in the world that has nothing to do with the unavailability of fast food. She heard the rumors last year; everybody did. Powerful witches walked in other dimensions in an attempt to drive the magical creatures out from ours. Blah, blah, blah.

Spell must have backfired, though. (Not that the remnants of the Council are admitting anything.) Some manner of dead still do walk the earth. Only difference now is they don't dissolve conveniently into dust anymore. Small mercies, right? Sparing her that painful memory. Fan-fucking-tastic. She kicks the decomposing corpse as she leaves the otherwise quiet street, its crumbling buildings a mute testimony to all that's lost.

She's walking on the side of the road when she hears the rumble of an approaching vehicle. Monsters don't drive around in daylight, as a rule, so instead of diving into the underbrush she shoves gun and holster into her bag and waits, shading her eyes with her hands until she picks up the glint of metal coming over the hill.

***

"Siph'ning gas is fun," says the little girl, cozying up to Sarah on the back bench seat of the big red truck.

Sarah scoots away, resting her cheek against the window. Conversation's over-rated; she'll take a ride, but the less these people know about her, the better.

She wonders, like she always does when she sees young girls, if this one will be a Slayer. She hopes not; good way to get yourself killed. She looks wistfully at the girl's parents, who lean together as they talk quietly in the front seat. They don't seem curious about her; guess being a scrawny-looking teenager has its benefits. They just think they're helping out a stranded traveler. She pushes the sawed-off end of her shotgun further under the flap of her backpack.

Two years ago, all hell broke loose. News came out of LA. Then, silence. Finally, demons. Weird stuff, unreal stuff, and lots of garden-variety vamps. They barreled over the Rockies and into the breadbasket. When they hit Nebraska, she hit the road. Nothing much to stay for after watching Mom and Dad turn to dust on the end of her trusty stake, after walking through their gritty dust, breathing it, scrubbing it off her hands. Leastways she doesn't see vamps these days; the zombies are getting worse, though, seems like.

She looks away from the little girl's parents, and narrows her eyes at the horizon. A little further east, and she'll be in Cleveland. Odd destination for a winter hidey-hole? Maybe, but it's not like she's got anyplace better to go. She mostly ignores what's left of the Council, but Julio, the guy who'd be her watcher if she let him, is there. This means a place to sleep, and better than sleep, if her moves are right.

Who's she kidding? Her moves, in and out of bed, are always textbook-perfect. She's a slayer -- one of the few left. Way too many of the current crop have fallen to the beasties out of the dimensional rifts, as she figures it. So the world's got to wait for another generation of little girls to grow into their powers.

The kid next to her babbles on. Sarah lets it wash over her without heeding the words. Too bad they hit puberty one by one, instead of in armies and droves. The dead rise faster than new slayers are called, and the electricity hasn't come back on. Country, maybe the world, has just given up.

Her reverie brought to a halt by the truck stopping, Sarah coils out of the back seat and down to the ground. She sees the obstruction right off.

"Overpass fallen," grunts the taciturn man. "Guess we'll be jagging back, see if the last turnoff goes through."

"Too much debris to go offroad here," the woman says. "And the suspension's almost shot."

She's suntanned and careworn, a bandana wrapped around her head like a World War II poster or something. No place left in the world for women who aren't tough, Slayers or not.

Sarah suddenly can't stay with them anymore. This facsimile of a family vacation is making her all squirmy inside, making her think about stuff she prefers to keep repressed. She adjusts the straps on her backpack and looks up resolutely. "Thanks for the ride this far. I'm on my way now. Not going back."

***

The navy sky is streaked with yellow and red clouds at the horizon. The ongoing apocalypse is no nuclear winter; world's ended and there still are pretty sunsets. Go figure. Sarah shakes her head. Her feet are sore. The trail mix she's been rationing is getting low, and she's keeping an idle eye out for a nice open area to camp. Someplace nothing can sneak up and corner her is ideal.

She circles the deserted city in a looping arc, looking for slayables. That nice family's probably somewhere in the area; best clear it out for them. Not that she's going to go looking for them; she does her best work alone. And she feels that itch under her skin, that itch that says _kill something_. Her gun's back slung alongside her body where it belongs, and she's ready for some fun.

_Something_ obliges her by appearing, right on cue. A groaning member of Homo Not-So-Sapiens Undead comes around a corner out of an alley. It's close enough, and moving slowly enough, that she's able to pick it off with her trusty sawed-off. She steps over the corpse, checking to see if it's got buddies.

There's a rusty red truck backed into the alley. Hood's up, and something green is leaking over the front grill. Takes her a minute to realize that's the truck she spent most of the morning in. She unstraps her pack slowly, setting it down, keeping alert.

The stench of death is thick in the air. She whirls and engages, holding two zombies back with an explosive series of kicks. She gets one shot off, but misses. These zombies are fresh, which is bad news: their brains aren't total sludge yet. The one that used to be a man throws himself at her with a grunt. She head-butts him and then pushes him into optimal shootin' range with a kick that would have won her team a soccer trophy. His head is no match for a shotgun blast. She wonders if Julio will give her a commendation. "Oldest Slayer Not Yet Dead" has a certain macabre ring to it.

'Course, if she's going to win that, she's gotta take out Rosie the Zombie Riveter here. Rosie's got a grabbing technique; currently she's trying to pull Sarah's arm off. Or maybe she's just trying to get closer to Sarah's tasty brain; Sarah's unsure and not inclined to try to find out.

Sarah tries to regain possession of her arm, and Rosie slams her against a brick wall. Blood drips into Sarah's eyes, but she's thinking her gaze would be running red about now, regardless. She doesn't think about this woman being someone's mom. She pulls free, whips her sawed-off shotgun around, holds it by the still-warm barrel, and flattens the bitch's skull. Never cut off the stock; good for dealing with the undead.

Then she leans over and loses what little lunch she ate. Great.

***

Sarah leans up against the truck's wheel-well and assesses the damage with mechanical precision. Three more shells gone. One dislocated shoulder. One non-serious but bloody head wound.

Movement in the back seat of the truck, and Sarah tenses, prepared for another revenant. But it's the kid, grimy face pressed up against the window, teary and red and puffy and alive.

Sarah doesn't have time for this. She's got a long walk, from the look of this truck. Another day or so and she'll make Cleveland. She can forget about the road and everything she's seen and done here. She shoulders her shotgun and heads over to pick up her pack. Grimacing at the twinge of pain, she walks away.

She gets about ten paces, says "Fuck it" under her breath, and turns back. The little girl looks ever-so-slightly hopeful.

Sarah opens the truck's driver-side door, pushes the empty seat forward, and holds out her hand. "I'm Sarah. What's your name?"

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge: Post-apocalyptic future America. Slayer aged 19; 3 years experience. Horror genre. Parents were turned when she was 17; she's been alone since then. Doesn't stay in one place very long. Has a romantic partner (a fuck-buddy, if you will) she visits and hooks up with every few months. There are only a handful of activated Slayers at this point. Only mention the other current Slayers in passing. No non-con. No appearances by any other recognizable characters. Max rating R - NC-17.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Eleven Hours at the End of the World (The Memento Mori Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/103041) by [dark_roast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast)




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